Balance of Strategy, Tactics, and “Optimization” in 40K

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**Insectum7**

Galas wrote:

Spoiler:

Insectum7 wrote:
I was just reading about how Fleshborer gants remained key for some lists being valuable for filling up space as movement blockers as well. Hormagaunts just the same but faster for a little extra cost. Genestealers were used for a long time as well, even if not as much recently.

The key point I think is that it's easy to see how each of those units would have clear roles, and the only reason they may not be competetive is thruough slight point tweaks or simple fixes. The distance to travel from where they are to being more commonly used is probably very small. And back in their heyday, people took lots of them. "Min troops" Tyranids is just not something I've seen a lot of.

Comparing that to a long history of "Min Scouts" Space Marine lists prior to Primaris says something about internal balance (or percieved internal balance) I think.

Non-troop Space Marine units are more or less just the same units as the Troops, just betterer either at a specific thing (Vanguard), or at everything (Sternguard), which makes the troops themselves less inspiring and appear less valuable*. The Tyranid troop roles on the other hand are harder to replace with non-troop Tyranids.

*Personally I've always found the Tactical Squad valuable, and taken lots of them, but I speak about a common community perception.

Basically this. In Tyranids you don't have anything else that can do what troops do for you because troops are your small bugs. In Marines as you say, all the army are just marines with slighly different wargear + vehicles.

Other armies that work like Tyranids are Necrons or Dark Eldar were your troops are 90% of your infantry and do stuff nothing else can actually do.

But armies like Orks were the boyz have to compete with boyz+ like stormboyz or kommandok is very easy for one or the others to be the most optimal choice. Imperial guard, like Tyranids, they can play mechanised or infantry based but if they want to go infantry they need to go troop heavy or bust.

Which, btw, is why Marines were "complete" at about 4th edition with some very minor tweaks.

Tactical
Assault
Devastators
Scouts
Bikes
Terminators
Veterans (not Sternguard)
that's it.

The only tweak I'd make to the lineup is to give Assault Squads more access to various weapons in the same way that the 2nd ed version did. (The lack of which excused Vanguard)

**Strg Alt**

I think the limitation of special ccw was one of the few improvements of 3rd compared to 2nd for any type of common assault units. So units being equipped with chainswords and bolt pistols was okay but refusing to give the former ANY kind of special rule despite being a trademark weapon of the entire setting was beyond stupid.

Giving it REND which either activates on a hit roll of 6 or a wound roll of 6 would have been suitable. It also could have been combined with the implementation of levels which then could come in forms of AP (2, 3 and 4 or worse).
Alas the chainsword was reduced to the level of a fist punch.

**Insectum7**

Strg Alt wrote:
I think the limitation of special ccw was one of the few improvements of 3rd compared to 2nd for any type of common assault units. So units being equipped with chainswords and bolt pistols was okay but refusing to give the former ANY kind of special rule despite being a trademark weapon of the entire setting was beyond stupid.

Giving it REND which either activates on a hit roll of 6 or a wound roll of 6 would have been suitable. It also could have been combined with the implementation of levels which then could come in forms of AP (2, 3 and 4 or worse).
Alas the chainsword was reduced to the level of a fist punch.

I think the moment you impose those restrictions on the Assault Squad is the moment that you leave design space open for Vanguard, which in turn just "invalidate" the Assault Squad in the eyes of a lot of people. In addition, the Vanguard become a "stolen unit" from the BA, who were unique in the ability to field Jump Pack veterans at the time. Imo the Assault Squad should just have the wide array of options (including bringing back the other Special Weapons) available to them. Assault Squads were hit the worst out of the Marine units. Bike Squads kept all their Specials, Devastators of course kept their 4 Heavy Weapons, Scouts retained their wide array of weapon options. . . yet Assault Squads were kicked back to only Chainswords and two Flamers or Plasma Pistols, when formerly they had everything available to them. Power Swords/Fists/Axes, Melta/Plasmaguns, etc.